‘Appalling Scene’ of Killings Found in a Syrian Village

United Nations’ observers reached the
site of an alleged massacre in Syria, where they found evidence
of killings in a now-abandoned farming village set amid
cornfields.

“We found burned homes, and at least one burnt with bodies
inside -- there was a heavy stench of burned flesh,” Sausan
Ghosheh, spokeswoman for the UN observers, said in her account
posted yesterday on the mission’s website.

The group of 25 UN observers reached the township mid-
afternoon yesterday, after having been obstructed by the Syrian
Army and small-arms fire, she said. A BBC reporter described a
“remarkably appalling scene” of burned homes containing pools
of blood and bits of human flesh.

BBC correspondent Paul Danahar, who was traveling with the
UN observers, said it was unclear what happened to the bodies of
as many as 78 people that opposition activists said were killed
in the village of Mazraat al-Qubair. A man from a neighboring
village said a pickup truck arrived after the killings and took
bodies away, Danahar said in an audio report posted today on the
BBC website.

More than half of those killed in the village, in Hama
province, were women and children, with some dying during army
shelling and others burned or stabbed by pro-government shabiha
militiamen who arrived an hour later, the opposition Syrian
National Council said June 7 in a statement on Facebook. (FB) Syrian
state television denied that and blamed “terrorists” for any
atrocities.

‘Not Clear’

“Residents from neighboring villages came to speak to us,
but none of them were witness to the killings on Wednesday,”
the UN’s Ghosheh said. “The circumstances surrounding this
incident are yet not clear, and we have not yet been able to
verify the numbers.”

The Qubair attack follows the massacre of 108 people,
including 49 children, in Houla May 25 in one of the worst
atrocities of the 15-month uprising against President Bashar al- Assad’s government. Syria also denied responsibility for the
Houla killings, accusing rebel fighters of carrying them out to
cause the collapse of a peace plan brokered by Kofi Annan, the
United Nations-Arab League special envoy.

Daraa Shelling

About 50 people were killed across Syria yesterday,
according to the Local Coordination Committees, an activist
group. Seventeen people, most of whom women and children, died
from shelling in the city of Daraa, the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights reported today on its Facebook page.

Syrian state television cited an unidentified official as
saying “terrorist groups” attacked private and public
institutions in the coastal city of Latakia. Three people were
also killed in a car bomb in the outskirts of Damascus, it said.

Annan warned at the UN on June 7 that Syria was headed
toward a future of “brutal repression, massacres, sectarian
violence and even all-out civil war.” Privately, he told the
15-member Security Council that his efforts to bring about peace
can’t be open-ended and international consultations must yield
results, according to diplomats who were present and described
the remarks on condition of anonymity.

Annan met yesterday in Washington with U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton to discuss the outlook for his failing
peace plan. Neither commented publicly on the latest killings.

‘Other Options’

“Some say the plan may be dead,” Annan said, speaking at
the State Department alongside Clinton. “Is the problem the
plan, or the problem is implementation? If it’s implementation,
how do we get action on that? And if it’s the plan, what other
options do we have? All of those questions are now being
discussed.”

Russian and U.S. officials held talks in Moscow yesterday
on the conflict in a bid to narrow differences before a meeting
between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama in Mexico
this month.

Fred Hof, the State Department’s special envoy to the
Syrian opposition, and the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, met with two Russian deputy foreign ministers, Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennady Gatilov, the Foreign Ministry said in a
statement on its website.

The two sides “exchanged opinions about ways to facilitate
a peaceful settlement in Syria with an emphasis on mobilizing
international support” for all parties to implement Annan’s
cease-fire plan, the ministry said, saying “practical aspects”
of a Russian proposal for a conference on Syria were also
discussed.

At Odds

The former Cold War foes are at odds over U.S. and western
efforts to oust Assad, a Russian ally. Their latest disagreement
concerns Russia’s initiative to involve Iran in talks to end the
bloodshed in Syria and find a possible successor to Assad.

Putin has picked up “positive” feedback from France,
China and Iran on a proposal to gather all nations that have
sway over Assad and the opposition to come together for talks,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said June 7.

Saudi Arabia and Iran should both play a role in the
meeting, Bogdanov said yesterday in an interview with Russian
state broadcaster RT. Russia is holding “intensive
consultations” with the possible participants, he said.

“The Syrian crisis and attempts to find a peaceful
political resolution of this crisis may provide a basis for
reconciling the interests of all the leading, most influential
players,” Bogdanov told RT, according to a transcript of his
comments.

Initiative Rejected

The initiative was rejected by U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, who expressed doubts that Iran would play a
constructive role. Iran, whose Shiite rulers have close ties to
Assad’s minority Alawite regime, is Syria’s strongest backer
along with Russia and China.

This week’s preliminary round of discussions in Moscow will
lay the groundwork for the meeting between Obama and Putin at
the Group of 20 summit June 18-19 in Los Cabos, Mexico. Putin,
inaugurated for a six-year term on May 7, skipped last month’s
summit of the Group of Eight at Camp David, the presidential
retreat in Maryland.

Russia has shielded the Assad regime, its biggest Middle-
East ally, vowing to veto any attempt to impose sanctions on the
Syrian government or to approve military action through the UN
Security Council. That threat has hobbled international efforts
to pressure the Assad government as the conflict escalated from
peaceful protests into armed fighting with sectarian
undercurrents.